Unearthing the Valley of the Nobles (Full Episode) - Lost Treasures of Egypt - National Geographic

Egypt, the richest source of archaeological treasures on the planet. Oh, that's a fabulous one. Beneath this desert landscape lie the secrets of an ancient civilization. Wow, you see why the pharaohs chose this place. Now, our cameras have unprecedented access to a full season of excavations and surprising discoveries. I'm driving so fast, but I'm so excited. It's an entrance. We can see an entrance. That could rewrite history as we know it. I have just been told that they have found something. Oh, my gosh. A sphinx. This is a lovely left foot. So we've got a pair. This time, Ivana is piecing together the bones and story of a woman who served pharaoh Amenhotep II. You will not find another tomb showing this very personal relationship with the king. And Alejandro and his team discover a mummy that seems too humble for this necropolis for Egypt's nobles. It looks not well-vandished. And extraordinary burial treasures in a 4,000-year-old tomb. The Valley of the Kings, renowned in archaeology because here, 3,500 years ago, the great pharaohs of Egypt began using these secluded cliffs as their cemetery. But just 100 miles to the south, near Aswan, is another burial ground at least 1,000 years older and far less explored. This site is home to one of the largest enclaves of intact tombs in Egypt. Here, two teams, one featuring British and Swiss archaeologists. One ear preserved. And another, led by a Spanish university professor, are hoping to make new discoveries that could bring to life the stories of Egypt's ancient nobles. Professor Alejandro Jimenez Serrano's team is the biggest foreign team in Egypt. Today, the dig season begins. It's amazing to get up, and the first thing that you see is the Qubet el-Hawa, the hill. Qubet el-Hawa is one of the largest ancient burial sites in Egypt. So far, 100 tombs have been discovered here. They belong to the nobles who governed Egypt hundreds of years before the pharaohs, buried in the Valley of the Kings. Alejandro's mission is to hunt for unopened tombs and reveal more about these early Egyptians. It's difficult to explain how I feel. Not only nervous, it's exciting. It's a mix of feelings. It's an honor to come every year. Now it comes the most difficult part of the day, to climb the hill. This is the team's 10th year digging here. So nice to be here again. There's a reason why everyone is excited to be back. Last year, Alejandro found the entrance to a sealed tomb, but his permit expired before he could explore inside. To protect against modern-day tomb robbers, they put up a steel security door to block the entrance to the vertical shaft that leads to the sealed burial chamber. While it has been one year waiting, one year imagining the possibilities, I'm very excited. I don't know who is more nervous, me or my team. I want to go now. After a year of dreaming about this moment, Alejandro finally enters the tomb. It's amazing. It contains a coffin dating back to around 2,000 BCE. Workers have inserted a box covered in acid-free paper inside the coffin to stop it from collapsing while they examine the tomb. We have been very lucky. The burial consisted in two coffins, the outer coffin and the inner coffin. Amidst the debris of the outer coffin, Alejandro spots something extraordinary. It's full of wooden boats, but unfortunately, the outer coffin is full over them. According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, boats played a key role after death. So placing model boats into tombs was a vital part of any burial. The vessels often came complete with crew because the ancients believed the replicas would come to life and help with fishing and transport in the underworld, while legends said the pharaohs used special vessels to sail across the sky for eternity. Ordinary people believed they, too, could reach the afterlife by boat, rowing on the Nile and into the next world. But there isn't just one boat in this tomb. There are four, complete with crew. To find these funerary boats in a tomb is rare today. You want to laugh, you want to shout, you want to cry. This is the first time in 70 years anyone has found a set of boats like this. This discovery gives Alejandro an extremely rare opportunity to study such important burial goods. But first, he has to safely extract them from the tomb. Alejandro calls in his team of conservation specialists, Sarah and Teresa. I have one, two, three, four boats. Yes. And the terrain is very bad. And the insects, it's their support. Termites have attacked the wooden boats. Sarah sprays on a liquid adhesive to hold them together. They prepare a foam-lined cradle to support the boat for the move to the team's restoration lab. But the wooden hull is stuck to the tomb floor. It will require surgical precision using scalpels to free it. Well, that was exciting. One of the best moments in my career. We take many weeks to clean it and fix the pieces that were broken some centuries ago. While Sarah and Teresa get to work on the boat, Alejandro can finally open the coffin to see who and what is inside. Nearby, the Swiss and British team is excavating a different site in the Valley of the Nobles. I will lead you up to the excavation site right now. Egyptologist Andrea Lopreano-Nars from Basel University in Switzerland has been investigating this site for 16 years. We really feel very privileged to have the opportunity to work here. We want to learn more about who used this tomb, who entered the tomb, who maybe plundered the tomb, who used them for burials, who used them for living over the long time span. Her team begins the search by clearing tons of earth and rubble from the tombs. Once secure, she enters the tomb labeled TT-95. It's quite a huge coffin chamber cut into the bedrock. Among the material that was still left by the tomb robbers, we came upon painted pottery vessels that bear the name and the title of Hunay. Inscriptions on the pottery suggest a noblewoman called Hunay was buried here. But who was she, and what was her connection to the pharaohs? To answer this, the team is searching for Hunay's remains, but she's not the only one here. This tomb was reused by others to bury their dead and contains hundreds of body parts. Robbers ripped apart the mummies in search of gold and amulets wrapped inside. Finding Hunay will take a forensic investigation. One ear preserved. There's no jaw, just a fragment. In charge of analyzing these human remains is British bioarchaeologist Ivana Kozheradska-Agunmarkin. I've worked in Egypt 13 years, I think. So I've got substantial experience with this kind of material. This is a lovely left foot. When I'm sometimes asked what I do, I'm kind of hesitant to say because there are usually two types of reaction I get. One is, ugh, and the other is, oh, really? I suppose it's not for everybody. Finding Hunay's remains is like looking for a needle in a haystack. There you go, that's the left arm. We estimate the minimum number of individuals to be just over 80. That's quite a big number, really, when you think about an adult individual having 206 bones, and imagine the skeleton is dispersed. Every side has different challenges, and this one is definitely challenging. So we've got torsos with no arms or no legs or heads. Piecing together these bodies will help reveal the stories of who the ancient aristocrats were and what they believed. The Spanish archaeological team working the Koubet el Hawa dig is just getting started for the day. Egyptologist Martina Bartanova is ready to go, despite the early hour. I go to bed about midnight or 1 a.m., and now I have to switch. It's other kind of jet lag, but the working jet lag. You are here because you love the job, so that's it. You wake up. When I was about 15, I read about archaeology in Egypt and I completely fell in love. Been for several years, I'm coming, and it's like, wow! I can't believe it, you know? I don't know if you can imagine how it is when your dreams come true. Martina wants to excavate inside a new, unopened tomb, but before she can get to it, she needs to clear a pathway through the sand outside. Everything is covered. I'm thinking about which way to take off the sand, the basic problem here. But after just an hour clearing a path, the team makes a discovery that could put a halt to everything. One of Martina's team has found parts of a body hidden in the sand. There is a burial, but basically you can see the skull with remains of hair. These human remains appear to be ancient. It's basically so fragile when you touch it or when even the sand around moves, it's just falling apart. We can put wet toilet paper because otherwise the bones crack. Martina needs to find out why this body is outside the tomb and uncover any clues that will help her put a date on the burial. As she clears away the sand, the bones reveal something even more unusual. It looks like a child. It might be a child. Across the hill, Alejandro's team prepares to remove the coffin from the tomb that held the boat. Inscriptions reveal the tomb's owner was a man named Shemai. They have just struck the lid of the coffin of Shemai. Rebecca, you are the first person that is looking at Shemai's face in 4,000 years. Muy bien, coño. Congratulations. The inner coffin is intact but extremely fragile. Alejandro's team has reinforced it to try and protect the mummy inside. It's difficult to express the feelings that I have now. It's a special moment because I'm studying this family. It's almost my second family. Elsewhere in the Valley of the Nobles, Andrea and her team are on the hunt for clues that can shed light on the life of a noblewoman called Hunay. They found pictures on a tomb wall that suggest she shared an unexpected bond with the pharaoh, Amenhotep II. It's really unusual. You will not find another tomb showing this very personal relationship with the king. In this case, you can really recognize that she's giving him her breast. The wall paintings reveal Hunay was a royal wet nurse who breastfed the future pharaoh when he was a child. This intimate relationship explains why Hunay was buried so close to the Valley of the Kings. This was originally the burial place of Hunay, and this is also where we found more individuals. In search of Hunay's remains, Ivana is sifting through thousands of bones found in her tomb. That's supraorbital ridges that are usually pronounced in males. Looking at the sutures, cranial sutures, and the teeth, this person was definitely over 35. The wall inscriptions also reveal Hunay had a grown-up son who was a high official, so Ivana believes Hunay was middle-aged when she died. You can see some depressions here. Could be menopause. This person seemed to have quite a pronounced nose. I've got a confident one female, question mark female, so that's two. And the other four, most likely male individuals. To find out if either of the female skulls belongs to Hunay, Ivana needs to look for signs of a gruesome mummification procedure only performed on the wealthy elite. The lady we're looking for definitely had a grain pull out in pieces. In Alejandro's restoration lab, the Spanish team puzzles together pieces of the model boats found in the tomb of Chamay. Termites have eaten much of the wood, but their excrement has actually helped hold parts of the boats together for thousands of years. We have some parts that are still in a very good state of conservation. This head of the man, it is covered with excrement of the termites, but the wood is still visible. Alejandro has spotted a figure distinct from the other carvings. We can see in the middle of the boat, a yellow face which belongs to a mummy, which would represent Chamay. This exceptional discovery will help archaeologists understand the evolution of burial practices in ancient Egypt. I was dreaming always to discover something like this, and it's a dream that came true. Alejandro's next task is to bring Chamay's mummy above ground for the first time in four millennia. This is the culmination of 10 years of fieldwork and an incredible opportunity to learn more about Chamay. Oh, 195. 125. It's quite short. My daughter is more or less like this, and she is eight years old. I expected that at least he would be around 20 years old or something. It has been a surprise. I never expected that he could be just a boy. On his coffin, it was written that he was the person in charge of the administration of the store. Controlling the store, you control the people because you decide who is going to receive food or not. This new evidence reveals Chamay held a powerful position in Egyptian society at a very young age. He may not have been a pharaoh, but like the boy king Tutankhamun, his status afforded him a tomb and burial goods to ensure a safe passage into the afterlife. Back at base, it's a rare opportunity to relax. For Alejandro, it's a chance to call home and talk to his own children. Each year, Alejandro spends four months away from home. You miss home. Obviously, I have the privilege to work in something that many millions would like to work, and I'm not going to complain, but at the same time, it's hard. I miss the birth of my eldest daughter, and this is something that my wife will not forgive me, and I will not forgive myself. When the team returns to work, Martina continues unearthing the remains of another buried child outside the tomb entrance. You can see quite well. He's very tiny and very fragile. My four-year-old niece, so she's like that big. It's emotional because, you know, it's a child. Child mortality was high in ancient Egypt, but it's rare to find children buried and preserved at this necropolis. Whenever you find some, it's something. The team must move the bones of the child to get access to the tomb. The delicacy of the excavation means hours of painstaking work in the hot sun. One mistake could ruin the operation. They have managed to move the child's bones into the on-site lab. Martina thinks the child and adult she's uncovered share a family connection with the tomb's owner. To find out what it was, she must unearth the secrets of who or what else is hidden inside. It's going to be amazing to see finally how it looks like. With the child's bones safely out of the way, Martina is finally starting to dig through the wall that seals the tomb. She hopes this shaft may lead to a burial chamber. And now I took the upper part I want to excavate and the lower part. And I'm now thinking where is the best way. All the wall is full of termites. That's actually why I kept excavating here, in the middle of the shaft. Termites must live near a food source, usually wood. So these insects are a sign there may be something behind the rock wall. Bingo. It seems that we have another intact chamber where Martina is digging. Let's go. Egyptian tombs have been ransacked by robbers for millennia. So finding an untouched tomb would be an exceptional discovery for the team. Can I step on here? We have here a wall made of stones with plaster and it seems that it's sealing something. I had my suspicions but I didn't tell you because I wasn't sure. If this is an intact chamber, it could contain mummies and burial offerings. Nobody in the last 4,000 years has seen what is behind this wall. But the archaeologists now face one of their biggest challenges yet, how to open the wall to the burial chamber without damaging what may lie behind it. Tell Jose to bring the computer and the camera. Alejandro has a plan. This big grill we use to inspect before opening any intact chamber because we do not know what we are going to find. He has no idea how thick the wall might be. Seems easy, but it's not. This is a small camera with lights and we are going to put inside to check if we can have any information about what is behind the wall. Debris, it's debris. There is no material, there is no pottery. I think that we have not reached the burial chamber. Most of the times the archaeology is frustrating because you do not find what you are expecting to find, but it's part of the game. The real prize is to get to the burial chamber. We have to take out all this material and probably we will find another wall. So we need to work a bit more. Alejandro can't see how far this chamber extends. There could be tons more debris to remove. At Ivana's dig site, she continues her forensic analysis of human remains to identify a woman named Hunay. She is looking for evidence of an ancient Egyptian burial practice. The traditional way of mummifying the body would be to remove the brain. The tool would be inserted through the nostril and then the ethmoid bone would be broken through to get access to the brain cavity. Only the elite underwent this mummification ritual. So as a nurse to the pharaoh, it would have been performed on Hunay's corpse. So here we have a complete skull and it's quite interesting. The person lost all their teeth except one. I think there is a small opening here. This skull seems to be fitting the description so far. The small hole is strong evidence that the brain was scraped out. But to prove her theory, Ivana will use digital technology to take a closer look inside. Meanwhile, Martina spent the last two days digging out this shaft in hopes of finding an intact burial chamber. Beyond the rocky debris, something catches her eye. It's a lid. I see part of the coffin. Coffin? What Martina first thought was a corridor is actually the burial chamber. It looks nice but the debris is over the coffin. But I can't touch it. It's too far to touch. It's a terracotta coffin and the biggest stone is not the stone, it's the lid of the coffin. Something like one meter long, 50 centimeters wide and the guy would be in the fetal position. Or he was a child. This is the burial chamber. So we have to proceed in a different way with much care. Congratulations. It's a very nice discovery because we have not documented any kind of burial like this. And it's not eaten by termites. The team now tries to carefully remove the lid of the coffin. It's very heavy. Oh my God. Careful. Be careful. Careful, okay? Careful. Oh my God. It looks like a scary movie. If this mummy is moving, I'm going as fast as you can. Very ugly mummy. Well, it's not mummy. It looks that it was simply put but not well bandaged. Instead of a mummy, the coffin contains a skeleton shrouded in black material. It's amazing. But why in this necropolis for the rich and powerful is there such a modest burial? Now the research begins. I'm excited to have time to look for this answer. The next day, the team heads to the other tomb they're excavating in the ancient necropolis of Kuper El Hawa. Deep inside, they've just unearthed two buried mummies. As they clear away the sand, Alejandro makes a startling discovery. It's the edge of a beautiful golden death mass. Wow. The quality of the cartonage is amazing, the colors, and it has text, and it seems that it will be possible to read the name of the original owner. But before Alejandro can try to put a name to this ancient body, his team will need to extract the fragile mask. They use soft paintbrushes to remove the sand grain by grain and then strengthen the mask with paper coated with resin to stop it from breaking. It's a privilege, and it's amazing to have the opportunity to work with untouched material. I cannot read properly all the signs. It will be better to do it after the consolidation and cleaning. The painstaking job of extricating the mask is made even harder because it's embedded under the bones of its owner. It's quite a delicate moment because we have human remains that are touching, and we don't want to destroy the cartonage. They are taking off the cartonage. They carefully remove the ancient mask, but it comes out in several parts held together with resin and paper to prevent any further damage. It is really amazing. Vale, gracias. I'm simply now checking if there was a name or not. Yes, there are more hieroglyphs. Here is the name. It's for the soul of Seti Heca Ib and Inet. Alejandro can now put a name to the unknown body, but he still doesn't know the man's job or role in society. We have now to look in the publications if we have any reference in the neighborhood or in other documents, but it's amazing. They now take the death mask to their on-site lab for further analysis. The team will try to piece it back together like a jigsaw puzzle. There could still be more secrets to be revealed about this mysterious man. Across the Nile, Ivana and her team have turned to digital technology in their hunt for the unusual find of royal nurse Hunay. We actually have the X-ray of that particular skull that we think could potentially belong to Hunay. Her being a woman of high social status, we would expect her body to have been prepared accordingly for the burial. Ancient Egyptians believed the brain had no value in the afterlife, so they pulled it out in pieces through the nose during mummification. We can't see any brain residue inside the skull. The brain was removed. The X-ray confirms Ivana's theory. All the evidence suggests this is the skull of Hunay. It's a huge discovery for the team. Hello. So may I present a female, an older female. Her brain was removed. If we're looking for the best candidate for Hunay, this would be the skull. 3,000 years after her death, the memory of Hunay has now been restored. It was her unique role as a royal nurse that earned her a tomb next to the Valley of the Kings so she could join the pharaohs for eternity in the afterlife. I think we are very lucky. I'm very happy about this. At another underground site, Martina remains hard at work trying to solve her own mystery, the burial of an unknown, unnamed ancient Egyptian. The grave is small and unadorned, highly unusual for burials in the Valley of the Nobles. She's hoping a forensic analysis of the skeleton will reveal more information. So right now the work taking off the bandages, registering what's there. Can you tell me the age? Wow. The average age or life expectance was about 25, because far more many women died during the childbirth. When you have someone who's over 70, I don't want to say surprised, but it's nice to know and it's nice to get finally someone who's really old. This woman lived an exceptionally long life, but it's a mystery why she hasn't been properly mummified. The team carefully removes the bones so the lab can continue to analyze the skeleton. But why, in a cemetery for the rich, did this lady have such a simple burial? Alejandro has a theory. She might be a person who worked for important people. Perhaps her position was to continue assisting those people after the death. We have to study all the material that we have, and this is exciting place for me. To find out more about the mummy of the older woman and five others, Alejandro is taking them across the city to a local hospital. He's arranged to use their medical scanner after hours to see what may lie hidden inside these ancient bodies. For security, a police escort joins the convoy. Well, tonight we are going to do the city scan. The idea is to use a non-invasive technology to try to know something about how they were buried, the pathologies, the possible diseases that they suffer, the cause of death, gender, age. The CT scanner should be able to see through the wrappings to the bones inside, but Alejandro is still worried about damaging the fragile remains. Mummies are very delicate, so you have to think that they have been rough more than 2,000 years ago, so they might suffer damages. Well, let's go. Alejandro's nighttime activities have attracted the attention of the local press. I will ask to the journalists, please, to leave to the specialists to make their work. Please, which one will we start now? Which one? This one. Okay. The mummies are wrapped in cloth for added protection inside the scanner. It works by taking a series of x-rays at different angles to create a three-dimensional image of the body. We are just checking if the scan was right. So far, very little is known about these mummies, like how they died and whether they were old or young. Alejandro is trying to piece together their identities, hoping to discover any new clues to make sense of their lives and, ultimately, their deaths. The first analysis of the body shows that he was over 60 when he died. So now I have to choose who is going to be the next. Okay. Let's go. Well, now we have something very interesting interpreted that mummy was going to be a man, but it seems that it's a woman. We didn't expect that. As the final body enters the scanner, the archaeologists spot something amazing. We have amulets. Together with the scar of a winged scarab. The scan reveals an elaborate carved amulet in the shape of a scarab beetle. Funerary amulets were often used by the elite to protect the soul of the deceased, and the scarab beetle symbolized rebirth. The scarab was placed over the position of the heart and often had spells written on it. These spells gave instructions to the person's heart to help them during the judgment of their soul. Out of the nine mummies Alejandro's team has scanned, this is the only one to have an amulet still in its original position. With such a precious find, Alejandro can wrap up his night on a high. Now it's 12 o'clock and I'm completely exhausted. The riches buried in the Valley of the Nobles go far beyond any gold or jewels to the lost souls who lie here for eternity. The royal wet nurse, the children whose buried pasts may one day be restored and the older woman who may have served the rich and famous, these are the true treasures hidden beneath the sands.